Jun/08©Chris Farley
The News
“I am not in the entertainment business.”
-Jim Lehrer, Host of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer
In the past few years it’s become almost cliché to attack news organizations. Politicians attack news organizations because their coverage isn’t favorable. Non-profits will make charges of bias. Comedians target the theme music TV news will cook up in a matter of hours. News organizations will attack other news organizations because the audience enjoys it when Katie Couric, for example, bashes the rest of the industry.
I’ve been watching the news for a long time. Not as long as some others (there was a time when I was in elementary school), but it’s not hard to draw a few conclusions from coverage today. Here’s what I’ve discovered:
- Bias is a problem.
- TV Networks need good ratings.
- Investigative journalism appears to be a thing of the past.
- The ultimate goal of news organizations is not to report the news.
- These are broad generalizations.
On the upside, it’s not as widespread as people might think. Fox News is hopelessly biased and does not practice journalism, but rather thinly veiled editorialization of the news and twisting of facts in order to push their own agenda. Other news organizations suffer from other problems or, at the very least, their bias is driven by something else, such as ratings (see below).
This one doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out. News networks are ratings driven and this is where theme music, flashy sets, and reporters who could be models come into play. People watch things by which they are entertained, so if news networks want people to watch the news, they need to make their coverage entertaining. But they will also follow public opinion more carefully than a politician. Few reporters were brave enough to be critical of, or question, the Bush Administration shortly after 9/11 and heading into the Iraq War. Their criticism now only stems from the unpopularity of the Bush Administration.
Once a journalist has a story, it’s rare that they search for the deeper meaning. Maybe it’s just me, but I think investigative journalism is declining. Reporters are becoming well-paid scribes.
This is a sad but simple truth. News organizations are largely corportations and corporations (at least the for-profit variety) exist to make money. If they can make money by doing the news, then everyone’s happy, but it seems that the big news corpoations (Disney, Viacom, News Corp, etc.) have been turning to entertainment news.
This is not true for every news organization or even every program or service of that organization.
So where do I turn for real news? PBS! I’ve grown up with The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and while I didn’t appreciate it when I was younger I do now. It does not have a bias towards any side ever and it does not try to turn news into entertainment. (See above quote). Because it’s publicly funded, ratings don’t matter. The news is really the news and it’s better than any of the other news networks I’ve ever seen.
I’ve run into several people who say that they just don’t pay attention to the news. It’s everyone’s social responsibility to pay attention to the news! It doesn’t matter if it’s entertaining or not, everyone should be paying attention to the news.
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8:11 pm on June 16th, 2008
The News Hour is the ONLY news I watch on television. I find it particularly refreshing because the producers of this program presumer their viewers are thoughtful and intelligent. It is also the only news show, as far as I know, that goes in-depth when presenting stories. And I have been watching it long enough to go back to the MacNeil Lehrer Hour
9:34 pm on June 16th, 2008
I watch PBS, sometimes, but mostly, i am a MSNBC fan. I think that, although sometimes bias, MSNBC is a respectable news organization that brings fact in line with comedy, placing the day's news in an easy way to understand and comprehend. I understand completely what you say about ratings and the ways everything is motivated by profit. I believe, if you get your news from different sources, there is alot less of a possibility of YOU believing t skewing by corporate media. If there is something factually incorrect, because of rating motivation, some blog or another network is BOUND to correct them, not only does it prove superiority, but it discredits the other network's credibility, which is a good thing for ratings.
I understand what you mean about profit motivation, but please excuse me if i continue to have my eyes glued to Keith Olberman, and Anderson Cooper.
-SpencerC
1:49 pm on June 17th, 2008
But then this brings up the point: What is considered news, doesn't it? From the way the blog is, it appears like "the news" to you is about the election, and moral issues that arise in our society. But a teenager may think that "the news" is celebrity gossip. My sister-in-law, Darlene, only watches "Extra" and "Access Hollywood" as her news source. However, she reads the New York Post (the worlds trashiest newspaper). I mean, I guess if she reads the New York Post, it is the same as watching The News Hour, just a little simpler, and somehow they incorporate gossip into it. I don't watch TV for the news, CNN.com is my source.